The USA Patriot Act (USAPA) was passed Oct. 26, 2001 immediately following the events of Sep. 11, 2001. The aim of the Act is to combat the threat of terrorist organizations by preventing organizations that assist or carry out terrorist acts from conducting business in the United States and by identifying any attempts to do so.
In particular, Sec. 326 of the Act outlines new requirements for financial institutions to positively identify their potential customers. These requirements include:                establishing a risk based approach to customer identification;        confirming the identity of new customers;        screen against government control lists;        maintaining audit trails of the execution of these requirements.The U.S. Treasury Department has mandated that all Financial Institutions process due diligence on all new commercial customers within a reasonable period of time following account opening”. The financial institution must maintain an audit trail that this due diligence was completed.        
The prior art appears to provide little assistance in meeting these new regulatory requirements. For example, U.S. 2004/0030649 A1 (Feb. 12, 2004) describes a system and method for processing applications for loans, credit, and the like. Although this publication describes that it is desirable to check for USAPA compliance risk, it provides no teaching concerning how USAPA compliance risk is to be assessed. U.S. 2004/0078321 A1 (Apr. 22, 2004) describes a system and method for providing a clearing house of customer risk information, including USAPA compliance risk. However, this publication also does not teach how USAPA compliance risk is to be assessed.
Citation or identification of any reference in this section or any section of this application shall not be construed that such reference is available as prior art to the present invention.